Drag Drink & Draw

 

6/19/26 Sharkie, 20-min. pose

Gage Academy offers occasional evening drink & draw events with models. For Pride month, two costumed drag models would be featured with rainbow-colored lights and backdrop. Who could resist that? Kim, Ching and I knew we couldn’t!

Sharkie, 10-min. pose

As promised, models Sharkie and Indigo gave us dynamic poses in fun costumes (look at Indigo’s boots!). It had been months since I last went to life drawing, so it took me the entire 90-minute session to feel like I was just beginning to warm up, but it was a ton of fun anyway. We’ll be back for more!

Rusty short poses!

Kim, Ching and me after a fun evening!

26 Wires

 

6/17/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A woman came out of the house next to where I was standing. After admiring my sketch in progress, she looked up at the scene I was sketching.

“Don’t put in all those ugly wires!” she warned me sternly. “I counted – there are 26 wires at this intersection!”

You can see how far that suggestion went. 😉

Technical notes: I’m pretty pleased with my proactive thinking and planning (a rare occurrence) on this one. Almost always, I paint the sky after I’ve drawn all the trees and other elements against the sky, which requires fussy cutting around those elements with the paint. I do this because: 1. I usually don’t remember to paint the sky first. 2. When I do (rarely) remember, I have to wait for the sky to dry completely before I can draw over it, which annoys me.

This time, I had drawn all the trees first as usual. Then I used a dark purple non-soluble Derwent Drawing pencil to draw the fence and street shadows. It occurred to me that I could draw the utility poles and all those wires first – before the sky. Then I painted right over the non-soluble lines. No smearing and no waiting for the sky to dry! That sequence was an ideal use of mixed media for strategic purposes.

Volunteer Park Water Tower

 

6/16/26 Volunteer Park

The first time I encountered the Volunteer Park water tower, I was with my Brownie troop in second grade. We all climbed up to the observation deck, which has a unique view of the city. Built in 1906, the tower is still part of the city’s water system. The reservoir is no longer in service, but the standpipe, which holds 883,000 gallons of water, is still in use.

The water tower up close

It’s been a few years since I last climbed up there. On a stunningly beautiful afternoon with temps in the delicious mid-70s (my outdoor temperature sweet spot), I wasn’t motivated to climb it. Instead, I went looking for different views of it. First I found the peek-a-boo view (top of post) of its conical top through many layers of trees (which has lately become a favorite sketching subject).

Then I walked around to the tower’s opposite side and made a small sketch of it up close (at left). I was so close, in fact, that the conical tower isn’t even visible from this angle.

Color notes: Two of the green Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons in my current daily-carry palette recently broke. While pencil tips can break from drops on the pavement, at least they can be sharpened easily. When crayons break, they become too short to use easily – once because they are difficult to hold, and again because they disappear into my crayon holder, out of sight. I’m now trying to find a crayon extender so I can comfortably use the stubs again.

It was as good an opportunity as any to pick out some new greens, both in crayons and in water-soluble pencils (Caran d’Ache Museum Aquarelle and Derwent Inktense). This is the first sketch using the new greens.

I also returned to my long-time favorite Middle Cobalt Blue Neocolor II for summer skies. As I yammered about recently, I like to use whatever blue I’ve chosen for the sky in at least one other place in the sketch to pull the palette together. It’s a bright, warm blue that doesn’t apply well as a shadow hue, but when mixed with the darkest green, it blends in without shouting “blue.”

So Many Faces, So Little Time

 

5/17/26

5/17/26

Many people tend to travel on the same commuting routes repeatedly to work or school. I’m not very regular – I take whatever train or bus will get me to my social or recreational activities – but I sometimes wonder if I’ve ever sketched the same person twice.

5/19/26

5/23/26

I’d like to think that once I sketch a face, I’ll remember it the next time I see it, but I doubt I would. So many men I draw look and dress similarly. Women tend to look more unique than men, but I wouldn’t necessarily remember them, either.

5/27/26

5/27/26

Unlike a place I’m sketching, I often have only the distance between two stops to observe and draw a face. When I begin one, I generally assume they’ll be leaving within minutes, so  the pressure is on to capture as much as I can before they do. And the pressure of not knowing how long I have is a large part of what I enjoy about sketching fellow commuters. Unfortunately, that kind of sketching doesn’t store the face in my long-term memory.

5/27/26

6/7/26

6/10/26

6/13/26

Cool Green Lake on a Hot Day

 

6/14/26 Green Lake walking path

Unusual for mid-June, temps were expected to climb to the mid-80s on the day of USk Seattle’s outing to Green Lake. I encouraged anyone (including myself) who got overheated to retreat to the air-conditioned public library. Almost everyone opted to stay at the lake, though, where a strong, cool breeze and plenty of huge shade trees kept us comfortable. I was surprised by how pleasant it was all afternoon, despite the heat.

Green Lake

Purely conjecture, of course, but something about their 
body language made me think they were on a second date.

Filled with sunbathers, the beach looked like Malibu, while swimmers, paddleboarders and kayakers took to the water. It looked and felt like summer!

Since I’m such a frequent Green Lake visitor, the throwdown was especially fun for me. It’s like seeing the familiar through fresh eyes again.

A great turnout, even on a blistering day!

A Walking Tour of Chinatown-International District

 

6/13/26 A lion dance kicks off our walking tour of Chinatown-International District.

Taha Ebrahimi

Mature, urban trees can witness many changes in a neighborhood. Historian Cynthia Brothers of Vanishing Seattle and Taha Ebrahimi, author of Street Trees of Seattle, offer an intriguing walking tour of Chinatown-International District, one of Seattle’s oldest neighborhoods. I joined about a dozen others last Saturday afternoon on the first in a series of such tours. All six free tours, supported by local cultural grants, sold out within 90 minutes, and more than 500 people are now on the waiting list! I was lucky to grab a spot!

Gathering at the historic Panama Hotel Café, where I’ve sketched many times, the tour began with an energetic lion dance performed by martial arts organizations. Then, for the next two hours, we made 15 stops around the District for notable buildings and trees. Cynthia and Taha told many fascinating stories about people, the community and the trees that make up this diverse neighborhood.

You may recall that I used Taha’s book a couple of years ago as my own walking and sketching guide to street trees in Maple Leaf and other neighborhoods. It was illuminating to hear the stories in person of seven specific CID trees that she had written about.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the opportunity to listen, observe, sketch and take notes, all at the same time! My pages are a scribbly mess, and my notes are probably indecipherable, but they serve as a great memory of an informative and fun afternoon.

A really special part of the tour was visiting Connie Chen's shop, Sun May Co., located in Canton Alley. Her family has owned the shop since 1911.

Connie Chen at Sun May Co.

After the tour, some of us went to Bush Garden, Seattle's second-oldest Japanese restaurant, which recently moved to a new location. We were offered a Mar-tree-ni, a special cocktail designed just for us!

Cynthia Brothers talks about a mural dedicated to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Group photo courtesy of Taha and Cynthia.

Bad Sketches

 

6/6/26 cloud study (photo reference)

Sometimes sketches just go bad. What can I learn from them?

Weather forecasters recently warned of rain, high winds and thunderstorms. The wind was real, but the rest was over-hyped. Walking through Maple Leaf Park, wondering if I would be caught in the impending storm, I saw a foreboding wall of dark clouds building to the south. I snapped a quick photo and hustled home.

Although I’ve tried painting clouds with watercolors, I’d never tackled them with Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons. Initially, I used my usual wet-in-wet “licking” technique. Then while the page was still wet, I went in directly and aggressively with dry crayons. I should have known better, but I used a Hahnemühle Akademie student-grade sketchbook, which doesn’t hold up quite as well as the 100 percent cotton version that I’m used to. The result (above) is not a disaster, but it’s not the look I was going for. I’ll try again sometime in the cotton book and see if that’s better.

The sketch shown below, made on location, was a mistake of a different sort. I was happy to see that the Green Lake Starbucks had opened their rooftop deck for the season. In the distance, these sunlit trees caught my eye. I was so eager to go straight in with color that I failed to think about the composition – which is nonexistent. Even as I began, I was already wagging my finger at myself: I should have done a thumbnail first! When I knew I was in irreversible trouble, I decided to distract myself by working on the murky area behind the trees – maybe the high contrast would help! HA!

6/12/26 Green Lake neighborhood

Someday I’ll go back and try that one again, too.

If I can learn even one thing, a bad sketch isn’t bad at all – just ugly. 😉